Once upon a time, ESPN's Pat Forde said that if Michael Vick ever returned to football following his arrest for his part in an underground dog fighting ring, he would never be able to play at the same level he had played at in Atlanta, and that Vick's "time has come and is now going." John Clayton surmised that Vick's future might be in the CFL or Arena Football League. "Veteran NFL general managers" were openly doubting that Vick could ever make a significant comeback after sitting out for as long as he was going to. The general feeling was that Vick's career was as good as finished.
What a difference a few years makes.
After most of the media skewered Vick endlessly for his crimes, tearing down the once-revered quarterback who was supposed to change the game as we knew it with his unstoppable athleticism and speed, many pundits and commentators have done an about-face. It's impossible to deny that Vick has made an unprecedented comeback, guiding the Eagles to an unblemished 5-0 record in his full games and posting impressive numbers like a 108.7 passer rating (easily trumping his career best of 93.8, set last year during the first leg of his renaissance as a backup in Philly). But as is the media's wont, the reports of Vick's deification, to paraphrase Twain, have been greatly exaggerated. He has been one of the league's best players in the games in which he has played. But talking heads and so-called experts have been quick to point to Vick as, apparently, the frontrunner for NFL MVP.
It's easy to ascertain why pundits are making such an outrageous claim; aside from Michael Vick, this has been one of the most boring NFL seasons in recent memory from a football standpoint. The last undefeated team was downed so early that it barely seems worth mentioning. Illustrations of the league's parity make one wonder whether there is even a "best" team to watch in the NFL. And even with the predictable implosion of the Minnesota Vikings, the decline couldn't have happened to a less fortuitous team; much of the talk surrounding their troubles has centered on Brett Favre, and Lord knows people are sick and tired of hearing about him. Throw in the fact that no one really seems to be running away with the MVP trophy and that many of the best players are currently on underwhelming teams, and the media needs something legitimately fascinating to discuss. Enter the ready-made resurgence of Michael Vick, a tale that is admittedly quite profound and deserving of its attention, but that has nonetheless been blown out of proportion in typical fashion.
Here are the facts: while the Eagles have played 10 games thus far, Michael Vick has only started and finished 5 of them. In fact, if one were to glance at the stats and see Vick's 191 passing attempts next to Kevin Kolb's 153, one might think he was playing in some sort of tandem. Vick has 1,608 passing yards on the year, which is three more than Tony Romo (who has actually played one fewer game than Vick) and 168 fewer than Derek Anderson. His 11 passing touchdowns in 7 games is impressive, as is the ratio of attempts to touchdowns; Vick tosses a touchdown every 17.4 times he throws the ball. However, this ratio is actually somewhat middle-of-the-road compared with the other top QB's in the league. Phillip Rivers, who has thrown 353 passes this year and leads the league in passing yards and passing touchdowns, throws a touchdown for every 15.3 passing attempts. Matt Cassel throws one per every 16.2 attempts. And Ben Roethlisberger, who has posted similar passing numbers to Vick's in only 6 games since returning from suspension, posts a passing TD for every 15.6 tries.
That's not to say Vick doesn't have his arguments. His 11:0 touchdown to interception ratio is pristine; the quarterback with the next-highest number of attempts without an interception is Luke McCown, who has thrown 19 passes this year. And, of course, Vick boasts a running ability that, even with Vick on the wrong side of 30, has given him more rushing yards (375) and rushing TD (5) than any other QB in the league. Granted, he also has the most attempts (55), but his average of 6.8 yards per carry is excellent by any measure. In Vick's limited action, one could argue that, if anything, he has been the most dynamic player on the field, and he has carried his team to victory on more than one occasion.
So why can't I accept him as the current leading MVP candidate?
Without digressing into a discussion about various philosophies and semantics, I propose that there are two ways to think about the question of "the frontrunner for MVP" at this point in the season:
(1) The person who, if he continued playing like he has been for the remainder of the year, is most likely to be MVP
(2) The person who, if the season ended today, would be MVP
Both of these paths are flawed, of course, and perhaps that's an argument against ever bothering to discuss who is the MVP after only 10 games have been played. The first one is far too speculative, as a couple of bad weeks can completely derail an MVP campaign and there is no realistic way to accurately predict what the next six games will hold for any player. And the second one is somewhat meaningless, as while it may be legitimate to say that someone has been the best player up to this point, the discussion is just empty filler, as the tide of a brand new week will ultimately wash away whatever arguments had been made using the previous week's statistics and force the discussion to start anew, meaning any revelations reached from this analysis have a maximum shelf life of only 7 days. Still, if we're going to have the discussion at all, one could use either of these interpretations to reach the same conclusion: Michael Vick has missed too much playing time to seriously be in the MVP discussion.
Using the second interpretation first, an expansion of Vick's current statistics to a full season would mean that out of a possible 16 games, Vick has started and completed the equivalent of 8 games. Maybe if you include the time he's spent on the field while not playing a full game, we can be generous and increase that to 10 games. Even so, that means he has effectively played in only 63% of a team's games. How could he be the most valuable player to step onto the field that year? Using the first interpretation, even if Vick played every game from here on out, he would still have only played 11 complete games out of 16 when all is said and done. I'll even count the Week 1 game against Green Bay since he threw 24 passes in that one. He'd still only be at 12 games out of 16, or 75% of the season. Would you consider giving the MVP to a baseball player who missed 2 months? A basketball player who was out for 20 games?
I will admit that it's not impossible; if a guy threw for 5000 yards and had 40 touchdowns even though he only played 12 games, that would mean that he was probably just as valuable overall as anyone who played all 16. But when discussing MVP candidates, it's not about whether a guy has performed well in the games he's played-- the discussion of Vick's touchdowns in limited attempts above was more generosity than anything. It's about whether he has put up the best numbers over the course of the season, not the best numbers for someone who has only played x number of games. Otherwise, Chris Snelling should have had lots of MVP buzz in 2008 for impressively hitting a home run every four at-bats. And it's not even just about those numbers; one could argue that a player should be handicapped for missing that time. After all, that's 4 or 5 entire games where Vick gave his team no additional chance to win whatsoever. Wouldn't he have to play even better for the other 11 or 12 games to justify his nonexistent value in the games in which he didn't play? If there were a quarterback who did play all 16 games, but in four of them he was abysmal and got replaced by, say, Kevin Kolb because he was ineffective, would we ever be talking about him as an MVP candidate? If not, then why are we giving that privilege to Michael Vick, who spent four games riding the bench and contributing nothing while another QB jumped in, and even beat the 8-2 Atlanta Falcons, in his stead?
Looking at Vick's numbers, there are only two relevant things in which he even comes close to leading the league: QB rating and TD to INT ratio. Both stats are impressive, but both are qualitative statistics; any good statistician will tell you that he has an advantage due to his smaller sample size. Yes, he would also have a better chance of being below-average due to the sample size, but it's the same logic that might see a basketball team running a slowdown offense against a superior opponent; limit the number of chances for things to happen (in that case, possessions) and the result is more likely to be the opposite of what's expected due to natural anomalies. If they lose, like Vick, they were expected to anyway; if they win, it's an upset, the chances of which were engineered to be higher. And not all of Vick's qualitative stats are impressive, either; his completion percentage of 62.8 is just 14th in the NFL, behind such players as Chad Henne, Jon Kitna, and even teammate Kolb. His YPG of 229.7 is 22nd.
But since a true MVP needs to post MVP numbers overall, it's imperative to look at Vick's quantitative stats as well. Vick's 1,608 passing yards ranks only 25th in the NFL, and his 11 touchdowns is tied for 21st. The main attraction, according to many sportswriters, is Vick's ability to run, but it's been proven time and again that this skill is far less important in the NFL than it is in college. Vick has rushed for all of 375 yards this year; his total yardage of 1,983 yards would still only rank 21st in passing yards. QB rushing is a novelty in the NFL, and it's likely this aspect of Vick's game that has blinded pundits with smoke and mirrors.
And just as important as highlighting the shortcomings of Vick's statistics thus far is to identify that there are other players far more suited for the honor of MVP. Phillip Rivers leads the NFL in passing yards, touchdowns, and yards per attempt. Tom Brady has posted superior stats while leading a New England team that some had doubts about to an 8-2 record even though his best target was traded after a few games. Arian Foster leads the NFL in rushing yards and rushing touchdowns and is averaging 5.2 yards per carry. And while somewhat unusual, Green Bay's Clay Matthews has anchored a defense riddled with injuries and seems to be single-handedly holding the unit together, leading the NFL in sacks and helping the Packers somehow maintain the best scoring defense in the land. All of these players have played in every single game and proven their abilities over the course of the full season; in the weeks Vick missed, these players still shined. People are touting Vick because they mentally fill in the gaps and assume Vick's stats would have been just as good during his missed time. They may not have been, but more importantly, in reality, he put up no stats at all. Don't penalize those who have played all 10 games, and played well in each and every game, by elevating a player who has only played well five or six times this year.
By season's end, Vick may have put up numbers that make him impossible to ignore. But at this rate, he will only end up with 2,573 passing yards and 18 touchdowns. This is the NFL's most valuable player?
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Why is there such a stigma against running up the score?
Please don't think of this blog as being just about college football; I had hoped to write my second post about a different sport, to get some variety going. But I was spurred to write about this post's topic due to a football game I had the pleasure of watching Saturday that most people (outside of fans of Wisconsin or Indiana football) probably didn't pay too much attention to. The game between Wisconsin and Indiana was supposed to be a blowout. The Vegas line was -21.5 for Wisconsin, which, for those not inclined to betting, means that Wisconsin had to win by at least 22 points for gamblers to make money on a pro-Wisconsin wager. Essentially, the Badgers were considered favorites to beat Indiana by three touchdowns. And why wouldn't they be? Wisconsin came into the game with an 8-1 record, their lone loss coming against an outstanding Michigan State squad, while Indiana had yet to win a Big Ten game and could only boast victories over the likes of Arkansas State and Western Kentucky. In the minds of many, Wisconsin was capable of beating Indiana by far more touchdowns if it so chose. If they wanted to "run up the score," as people say, there was no telling what kind of havoc Wisconsin could wreak on the Hoosiers' porous defense.
This Saturday, fans were given either a rare treat or a bitter pill, depending on how one might look at it. Wisconsin did run up the score. A lot. Regardless of how far ahead they were, the Badgers didn't let up against lowly Indiana. The final score? 83-20, Wisconsin.
Those 83 points marked easily the highest scoring total of any FBS game this year. It also tied a Big Ten Conference game record. Suddenly, Wisconsin, who looked merely mortal in a 34-13 victory last week over mediocre Purdue, now seemed positively superhuman. Meanwhile, Indiana, who looked like potential upset specialists after very close losses against Iowa and Northwestern, were made to look like they belonged in the Pee Wee league. Watching the game alongside other college football enthusiasts was also a thrill, as we were awed at how high the score continued to climb each time we turned back toward the screen. This was becoming a true feat, with Wisconsin excelling in a rare way that, we felt, deserved our attention. It was so rare that it was only 17 points away from tying the NCAA record for points scored against a major college opponent, when Houston put up 100 versus Tulsa in 1968. The Wisconsin basketball team only scored 83+ points three times last season. It was a sight to behold.
But it also raises that pesky question of sportsmanship. "Sportsmanship" is hard to define, but the one thing we definitely know is that it's not covered very well in the rulebook. Most facets of sportsmanship are considered unwritten rules. Respect your opponents. Shake hands after the game. Don't talk trash, and if you do, no low-blows. Don't intentionally injure an opponent. And, of course, don't run up the score.
The concept of running up the score has always been an interesting one to me because of what the score symbolizes. You often hear announcers or writers say that a score was "not indicative of the result" or "not indicative of how badly [one team] dominated [the other team]." This would apparently indicate that, in general, the score does indicate the general flow of the game. I could tell you almost definitively that in a game with a final score of 14-12, the game was very close, there were good defensive efforts, either team could have ended up with the win, both teams made some crucial mistakes, and the game remained exciting until the end. If the final score was 45-7, I could almost always surmise that the winning team looked a lot better than the losing team, that the fourth quarter may as well not have even been played, that the losing team's defense was unprepared for what they faced, and that at least one person on the winning team's offense enjoyed a notable statistical day. The score is not just the way we gauge who won the game, insofar as the team with the higher number has beaten the team with the lower number. The numbers themselves are also created in accordance with what happened within the game.
In this regard, while Wisconsin certainly didn't need those last few touchdowns, or even those last 50 points, wouldn't holding up their offense have created a score that was, in a sense, a lie? If these two teams, playing to the best of their abilities for 60 minutes, would have produced a final score of 83-20, why should Wisconsin be expected to handicap themselves by limiting their offensive output to, say, 50? After all, it's their offensive capability, and they've worked hard to earn the ability to put up 83 against a team like Indiana. Why does football's circle frown on teams putting up the scores they have earned the right to try for, rather than scores meant to win the game but not hurt the other team's feelings?
It's worth taking a look at whose feelings, exactly, we care about here. As you move down the ladder of football levels, you see that kids now play the game when they've barely entered kindergarten. Football already becomes "competitive" just a few years after that. From this level all the way up through high school, most leagues have "mercy" rules, where if a team goes up on another team by a certain number of points, the clock might accelerate to bring the game to an expedited end, or, in some cases, the game might end immediately, so that the worst a team can lose by is a few dozen points. These rules make sense because of the age of the players involved. Leagues prior to high school are often considered instructional and developmental, even as they remain competitive, and most of the kids playing in these leagues are preteens. There's no reason to expect a 9-year old to have to sit there and watch an opposing team put up touchdown after touchdown to embarrass him and his teammates; the levels of competition are often very unbalanced, most of the kids playing are just doing so for the social experience and to have fun, and most of all, kids of that age are not emotionally mature. It's easy to see why the adults that run youth leagues implement mercy rules that prevent opposing coaches from making small children cry with callous and mean-spirited strategy.
Even in high school, one can see why this type of sportsmanship makes sense, even though high school football can often seem like life or death for both the players and the fans. These are not scholarship players, they have also not hit a level of sufficient emotional maturity, and many of them are still playing the game as a fun, extracurricular activity. We've become almost conditioned to think of high school football players as men, but many of them are still 14 or 15 years old, an age where they still have a lot of learning to do and at which football is often a more minor part of their lives, unless they play for very serious teams or expect to be recruited. Even though there are teams and players at the high school level who treat the game much as one would in college, there are obvious reasons to consider that it's better to err on the side of mercy at that level.
At the college level, however, things change. These are men at least 18 years old, and very likely older. They are attending expensive universities free of charge in exchange for their football playing, a form of payment even if most people don't want to admit it. They are no longer at the level where they are playing football just for the fun of it or so that they can make friends; they are officially playing football competitively, for institutions that often make a lot of money from the game and have national fanbases. What exactly is the issue with running up the score in these games? Are you afraid of hurting the feelings of grown men who are playing this sport by choice? Do you think the feelings of those men are better helped by pretending that you couldn't have scored another 30 points if you wanted to, even though everyone in the stadium knows you could have? When, exactly, can we tell people to "man up;" that, if they don't like the minor emotional struggles of what is essentially their job, they are free to start paying for their own educations?
This becomes even more amplified at the professional level, where I wouldn't have even thought I'd have to explain why this concept is bunk, though national sportswriters constantly crow about sportsmanship in the NFL (see the New England Patriots of the mid-2000's). Most players in the NFL pull in salaries in excess of $1 million. The minimum salary for a rookie, with no bonus, is about $300,000, an amount of money that most of us could never hope to make. These are men in their 20's or 30's being paid like kings to play football; if we are still worried about "hurting their feelings" when a score gets too high (and, mind you, the score gets too high because that losing team is clearly not effectively doing what it is paid to do), then what are they being paid for?
But at the college level, there is even another factor: the BCS, where style points matter. Two thirds of the BCS rankings are made up of human polls, polls where voters will likely look merely at the scores of the games from that Saturday as most are beat writers, former players, or other such types who may be inclined to only watch one or two games live. And when one of those voters stumbles upon the Wisconsin game, what do you think is more likely to elevate his or her ranking of the Badgers: a final score of 50-20, or a final score of 83-20? The former makes it look like Wisconsin dominated the Hoosiers; the latter makes it look like Wisconsin is in a league all its own. When coaches have to fight tooth and nail to earn inclusion within the top two spots, and with a team like Wisconsin actually having a legitimate-if-outside chance of making the BCS Championship Game, how could you blame coach Bret Bielema for appealing to voters as best he can? Heck, as I observed in my last post, Oregon has gotten its love by putting up gaudy numbers week after week (side note: anyone catch how Oregon only managed a meager 15 points when faced with a decent defense?). Why shouldn't Wisconsin's reaction be to outshine the Ducks?
But we can set the BCS argument aside for a minute, because only a handful of teams really need to care about that anyway. The bigger question is still one of why people really care about sportsmanship at the college level, at least in this instance. It makes sense to care about it in terms of not intentionally injuring an opponent, because causing physical harm goes beyond the parameters of the game and deeply affects one's personal life. It makes sense to care about a player shaking hands, because not doing so makes it look like a player personally dislikes the other team, which also goes outside the parameters of the game. But the score of the game, definitionally, is within the parameters of the game. Yes, having the other team score 83 points against you might make you feel sad after the game. But if you're a defensive back and you get torched by a wide receiver during the game, that will probably make you sad as well. Should wide receivers slow down in the interest of sportsmanship? Should defensive players intentionally drop easy interceptions so that the quarterback doesn't feel bad? Players or teams on the wrong end of in-game events never feel happy about it. So why do we care about this instance of making the other team feel bad?
The obvious answer is that it's excessive. If Indiana wasn't going to beat Wisconsin back when the score was 76-20 with two minutes to play, there was no need to make the score 83-20 after that. The biggest comeback victory in college football history was only 35 points, and those points certainly weren't all scored within two minutes, so unless you think Indiana is going to make history, there's not much reason to pad your lead from 56 points to 63 points. Part of the response to this argument comes from the above discussion about the nature of the score. A game is 60 minutes long, not 58, and both teams signed up to play all 60. If Wisconsin was good enough to score again, there's no reason to criticize them for legitimately playing that final two minutes, especially when playing "all 60 minutes" is the mantra of so many football coaches. Laying down for those final two minutes would have degraded the value of the final score and caused it to be less indicative of the skill level between these two teams, causing Wisconsin to potentially suffer in the BCS poll and causing the game to have, theoretically, less real meaning (however negligible that difference would be).
And if you do believe that winning is the only thing that really matters in a game, and not the final score, consider that each score does bring with it a greater chance of victory, even if those returns diminish as the score differential becomes wider. It's incredibly difficult to believe Indiana would have come back to win the game, but it wasn't even close to being a mathematical impossibility, just an extreme improbability. In 2006, when Northwestern led Michigan State by 35 points, they probably knew that no FBS team had ever come back from more than a 31-point deficit, and thought victory was assured. 38 unanswered points later, a new record was set. Who is to say that Bielema was wrong to do everything in his power to prevent the improbable from happening? Can you ever be too sure of a victory? Bielema gets paid a lot of money to win as many games for Wisconsin as he can. Isn't he earning his money by taking every precaution to ensure that those wins come? And anyway, why should he care about the "feelings" of a bunch of grown men who chose to play football at Indiana and whose prime objective that day was to beat Wisconsin? If you were head of security at a bank, and you had the opportunity to put an additional safeguard on the vault door, even if it was thought to be virtually impenetrable prior to the safeguard, would a factor in your choice to implement that safeguard be that it might further hurt a robber's feelings if he failed to get through it? It seems like a no-brainer to improve your job performance in this way, even if it means only increasing your effectiveness by a fraction of a fraction of a percent. So why wouldn't Bielema be given the same courtesy to do his job?
A football team's job is to score as many points as it can and prevent the other team from scoring as many points as it can. If it can do these two things, it can win as many games as it is physically able to. At lower levels of competition, football players have more important jobs: to have fun, to grow as people, to expand their horizons, to make friends. These objectives mean running up the score should take a back seat. But at the college and professional levels, grown men are being compensated to play football by choice, and the only negative offshoot of running up the score is making the losing team feel inferior.
But if the winning team can put up 83 points, the losing team is inferior. So why are people so afraid to accept that?
This Saturday, fans were given either a rare treat or a bitter pill, depending on how one might look at it. Wisconsin did run up the score. A lot. Regardless of how far ahead they were, the Badgers didn't let up against lowly Indiana. The final score? 83-20, Wisconsin.
Those 83 points marked easily the highest scoring total of any FBS game this year. It also tied a Big Ten Conference game record. Suddenly, Wisconsin, who looked merely mortal in a 34-13 victory last week over mediocre Purdue, now seemed positively superhuman. Meanwhile, Indiana, who looked like potential upset specialists after very close losses against Iowa and Northwestern, were made to look like they belonged in the Pee Wee league. Watching the game alongside other college football enthusiasts was also a thrill, as we were awed at how high the score continued to climb each time we turned back toward the screen. This was becoming a true feat, with Wisconsin excelling in a rare way that, we felt, deserved our attention. It was so rare that it was only 17 points away from tying the NCAA record for points scored against a major college opponent, when Houston put up 100 versus Tulsa in 1968. The Wisconsin basketball team only scored 83+ points three times last season. It was a sight to behold.
But it also raises that pesky question of sportsmanship. "Sportsmanship" is hard to define, but the one thing we definitely know is that it's not covered very well in the rulebook. Most facets of sportsmanship are considered unwritten rules. Respect your opponents. Shake hands after the game. Don't talk trash, and if you do, no low-blows. Don't intentionally injure an opponent. And, of course, don't run up the score.
The concept of running up the score has always been an interesting one to me because of what the score symbolizes. You often hear announcers or writers say that a score was "not indicative of the result" or "not indicative of how badly [one team] dominated [the other team]." This would apparently indicate that, in general, the score does indicate the general flow of the game. I could tell you almost definitively that in a game with a final score of 14-12, the game was very close, there were good defensive efforts, either team could have ended up with the win, both teams made some crucial mistakes, and the game remained exciting until the end. If the final score was 45-7, I could almost always surmise that the winning team looked a lot better than the losing team, that the fourth quarter may as well not have even been played, that the losing team's defense was unprepared for what they faced, and that at least one person on the winning team's offense enjoyed a notable statistical day. The score is not just the way we gauge who won the game, insofar as the team with the higher number has beaten the team with the lower number. The numbers themselves are also created in accordance with what happened within the game.
In this regard, while Wisconsin certainly didn't need those last few touchdowns, or even those last 50 points, wouldn't holding up their offense have created a score that was, in a sense, a lie? If these two teams, playing to the best of their abilities for 60 minutes, would have produced a final score of 83-20, why should Wisconsin be expected to handicap themselves by limiting their offensive output to, say, 50? After all, it's their offensive capability, and they've worked hard to earn the ability to put up 83 against a team like Indiana. Why does football's circle frown on teams putting up the scores they have earned the right to try for, rather than scores meant to win the game but not hurt the other team's feelings?
It's worth taking a look at whose feelings, exactly, we care about here. As you move down the ladder of football levels, you see that kids now play the game when they've barely entered kindergarten. Football already becomes "competitive" just a few years after that. From this level all the way up through high school, most leagues have "mercy" rules, where if a team goes up on another team by a certain number of points, the clock might accelerate to bring the game to an expedited end, or, in some cases, the game might end immediately, so that the worst a team can lose by is a few dozen points. These rules make sense because of the age of the players involved. Leagues prior to high school are often considered instructional and developmental, even as they remain competitive, and most of the kids playing in these leagues are preteens. There's no reason to expect a 9-year old to have to sit there and watch an opposing team put up touchdown after touchdown to embarrass him and his teammates; the levels of competition are often very unbalanced, most of the kids playing are just doing so for the social experience and to have fun, and most of all, kids of that age are not emotionally mature. It's easy to see why the adults that run youth leagues implement mercy rules that prevent opposing coaches from making small children cry with callous and mean-spirited strategy.
Even in high school, one can see why this type of sportsmanship makes sense, even though high school football can often seem like life or death for both the players and the fans. These are not scholarship players, they have also not hit a level of sufficient emotional maturity, and many of them are still playing the game as a fun, extracurricular activity. We've become almost conditioned to think of high school football players as men, but many of them are still 14 or 15 years old, an age where they still have a lot of learning to do and at which football is often a more minor part of their lives, unless they play for very serious teams or expect to be recruited. Even though there are teams and players at the high school level who treat the game much as one would in college, there are obvious reasons to consider that it's better to err on the side of mercy at that level.
At the college level, however, things change. These are men at least 18 years old, and very likely older. They are attending expensive universities free of charge in exchange for their football playing, a form of payment even if most people don't want to admit it. They are no longer at the level where they are playing football just for the fun of it or so that they can make friends; they are officially playing football competitively, for institutions that often make a lot of money from the game and have national fanbases. What exactly is the issue with running up the score in these games? Are you afraid of hurting the feelings of grown men who are playing this sport by choice? Do you think the feelings of those men are better helped by pretending that you couldn't have scored another 30 points if you wanted to, even though everyone in the stadium knows you could have? When, exactly, can we tell people to "man up;" that, if they don't like the minor emotional struggles of what is essentially their job, they are free to start paying for their own educations?
This becomes even more amplified at the professional level, where I wouldn't have even thought I'd have to explain why this concept is bunk, though national sportswriters constantly crow about sportsmanship in the NFL (see the New England Patriots of the mid-2000's). Most players in the NFL pull in salaries in excess of $1 million. The minimum salary for a rookie, with no bonus, is about $300,000, an amount of money that most of us could never hope to make. These are men in their 20's or 30's being paid like kings to play football; if we are still worried about "hurting their feelings" when a score gets too high (and, mind you, the score gets too high because that losing team is clearly not effectively doing what it is paid to do), then what are they being paid for?
But at the college level, there is even another factor: the BCS, where style points matter. Two thirds of the BCS rankings are made up of human polls, polls where voters will likely look merely at the scores of the games from that Saturday as most are beat writers, former players, or other such types who may be inclined to only watch one or two games live. And when one of those voters stumbles upon the Wisconsin game, what do you think is more likely to elevate his or her ranking of the Badgers: a final score of 50-20, or a final score of 83-20? The former makes it look like Wisconsin dominated the Hoosiers; the latter makes it look like Wisconsin is in a league all its own. When coaches have to fight tooth and nail to earn inclusion within the top two spots, and with a team like Wisconsin actually having a legitimate-if-outside chance of making the BCS Championship Game, how could you blame coach Bret Bielema for appealing to voters as best he can? Heck, as I observed in my last post, Oregon has gotten its love by putting up gaudy numbers week after week (side note: anyone catch how Oregon only managed a meager 15 points when faced with a decent defense?). Why shouldn't Wisconsin's reaction be to outshine the Ducks?
But we can set the BCS argument aside for a minute, because only a handful of teams really need to care about that anyway. The bigger question is still one of why people really care about sportsmanship at the college level, at least in this instance. It makes sense to care about it in terms of not intentionally injuring an opponent, because causing physical harm goes beyond the parameters of the game and deeply affects one's personal life. It makes sense to care about a player shaking hands, because not doing so makes it look like a player personally dislikes the other team, which also goes outside the parameters of the game. But the score of the game, definitionally, is within the parameters of the game. Yes, having the other team score 83 points against you might make you feel sad after the game. But if you're a defensive back and you get torched by a wide receiver during the game, that will probably make you sad as well. Should wide receivers slow down in the interest of sportsmanship? Should defensive players intentionally drop easy interceptions so that the quarterback doesn't feel bad? Players or teams on the wrong end of in-game events never feel happy about it. So why do we care about this instance of making the other team feel bad?
The obvious answer is that it's excessive. If Indiana wasn't going to beat Wisconsin back when the score was 76-20 with two minutes to play, there was no need to make the score 83-20 after that. The biggest comeback victory in college football history was only 35 points, and those points certainly weren't all scored within two minutes, so unless you think Indiana is going to make history, there's not much reason to pad your lead from 56 points to 63 points. Part of the response to this argument comes from the above discussion about the nature of the score. A game is 60 minutes long, not 58, and both teams signed up to play all 60. If Wisconsin was good enough to score again, there's no reason to criticize them for legitimately playing that final two minutes, especially when playing "all 60 minutes" is the mantra of so many football coaches. Laying down for those final two minutes would have degraded the value of the final score and caused it to be less indicative of the skill level between these two teams, causing Wisconsin to potentially suffer in the BCS poll and causing the game to have, theoretically, less real meaning (however negligible that difference would be).
And if you do believe that winning is the only thing that really matters in a game, and not the final score, consider that each score does bring with it a greater chance of victory, even if those returns diminish as the score differential becomes wider. It's incredibly difficult to believe Indiana would have come back to win the game, but it wasn't even close to being a mathematical impossibility, just an extreme improbability. In 2006, when Northwestern led Michigan State by 35 points, they probably knew that no FBS team had ever come back from more than a 31-point deficit, and thought victory was assured. 38 unanswered points later, a new record was set. Who is to say that Bielema was wrong to do everything in his power to prevent the improbable from happening? Can you ever be too sure of a victory? Bielema gets paid a lot of money to win as many games for Wisconsin as he can. Isn't he earning his money by taking every precaution to ensure that those wins come? And anyway, why should he care about the "feelings" of a bunch of grown men who chose to play football at Indiana and whose prime objective that day was to beat Wisconsin? If you were head of security at a bank, and you had the opportunity to put an additional safeguard on the vault door, even if it was thought to be virtually impenetrable prior to the safeguard, would a factor in your choice to implement that safeguard be that it might further hurt a robber's feelings if he failed to get through it? It seems like a no-brainer to improve your job performance in this way, even if it means only increasing your effectiveness by a fraction of a fraction of a percent. So why wouldn't Bielema be given the same courtesy to do his job?
A football team's job is to score as many points as it can and prevent the other team from scoring as many points as it can. If it can do these two things, it can win as many games as it is physically able to. At lower levels of competition, football players have more important jobs: to have fun, to grow as people, to expand their horizons, to make friends. These objectives mean running up the score should take a back seat. But at the college and professional levels, grown men are being compensated to play football by choice, and the only negative offshoot of running up the score is making the losing team feel inferior.
But if the winning team can put up 83 points, the losing team is inferior. So why are people so afraid to accept that?
Monday, November 8, 2010
Why is Oregon #1?
It would be an understatement to say that the BCS is fascinating. Say what you will about college football’s “official” ranking system (and I will say that I hate it, as about 9 out of 10 Americans do) but it’s impossible to deny that it’s downright intriguing. Perhaps that’s the case with all clearly flawed systems; we are forced to live in a world where the champion of college football’s highest division is determined by a hodgepodge of politicking, opinion, and spurious mathematical formulae, and so we watch, not because we are curious to see who we will eventually crown America’s best college team, but because we are engrossed by the results that the system spits out. Like the politburo inspiring a unique gallows humor in the former Soviet Union, the BCS, like Mother Russia, tells us who is the best football team, and while we can joke and complain and hem and haw all we like, we must ultimately accept the decision, as that is the only choice we have.
And that’s what makes it interesting: if the BCS were to tell us that Akron (0-10) was the #1 team in the nation, we would be forced to accept it. We would be forced to watch them play in the BCS National Championship Game, and if they won it, we would be forced to accept them as BCS National Champions, even if undefeated, major-conference teams failed to get in. And we could watch a team like TCU (10-0), which is at the mercy of the BCS, get left off the polls altogether, if for nothing else to satisfy the desires of the big-conference backers who would love nothing more than to see a top 25 filled with nothing but automatic qualifiers, “the way it should be.” Each of these scenarios is equally unlikely, but it does intrigue the diehard college football fan to know that quirks in the system cause one to sit on pins and needles every time the standings are released, especially if your team is one of the precious few with a legitimate shot at the title game. We trust that the system will make the “right” decision—or at least, we hope it will—but rarely is the proletariat content with the decision of a higher power that they don’t support nor fully understand.
I should make my biases clear: as an avowed BCS hater, I want nothing more than to see at least one non-AQ team make it into the title game this year. That doesn’t mean I lack the ability to discuss the system rationally, but I do view the BCS with an eye toward getting TCU or Boise State into the title game, mostly because it would foil the big-conference commissioners and athletic directors who perpetuate the system, and more than likely lead to its demise.
But fair is fair, and as long as the current system is in place, I don’t want to see any of the big boys get sandbagged either, which is why I’ve found it so curious this week that many sports commentators have been raising the issue of whether TCU should have supplanted Auburn in this week’s polls. I don’t agree with this notion; Auburn has played the 7th toughest schedule in the nation and is the only team besides TCU sitting at 10-0, and they deserve to be #1 more than any other team in the country. My concern is why writers and talking heads have declined to go after a more obvious target: Oregon.
I am not nearly alone in my dislike of the BCS, but even commentators who have acknowledged the fact that TCU might be unfairly left out of the top two seem to be content with the notion that Oregon is #1. The gushing praise from commentators, in fact, can be downright sickening. They mostly seem to love Oregon's offense, currently #1 in the nation in both yardage and points, and point to this as proof of Oregon's stature as the #1 team in the country. Granted, their offense has been nothing to sneeze at this year. But Oregon's accomplishments have been a mirage, and the schedule played by the Ducks, more than anything, has allowed them to gain the status they now enjoy.
Let's take a look at the average national total defensive ranking of each of the BCS conferences:
Big East: 26.1
SEC: 41.8
Big Ten: 50.5
ACC: 51
Pac-10: 64.1
Big 12: 72.6
There are a few surprises on this list-- I know quite a few people who would be shocked to see the Big East easily atop this list, and probably just as many who would be surprised to see the Big 12 at the bottom. Indeed, though, one of the least surprising things about this list is who is just above the Big 12: the Pac-10, which boasts only three teams (Oregon, Cal, Stanford) among the top 50 defenses nationally, the only BCS conference besides the Big 12 with that distinction. But perhaps the most surprising thing about this list concerns who is not on it. Let's take a look at that list again, with one small alteration:
Big East: 26.1
SEC: 41.8
Big Ten: 50.5
ACC: 51
Mountain West: 63.7
Pac-10: 64.1
Big 12: 72.6
Yes, that's right. Even if we count bottom-dwellers like New Mexico, Wyoming, and UNLV (all in the bottom 20 defensively in the nation), the MWC still bests the Pac-10's overall defensive rankings nationally. Yet TCU is an impressive 8th in the nation offensively despite not yet playing New Mexico (118th nationally) while Oregon has yet to play California (12th) or Arizona (60th). And while Oregon holds the top spot in the nation due mostly to its flashy offense (567 yards per game), TCU has been no slouch either, putting up 493 yards per game. And while Oregon has also been allowing 329 yards per contest, TCU has only let up 216. Oregon outgains opponents by 238 yards per game; TCU outgains opponents by 277. So if Oregon's overall game isn't as dominant as TCU's, why do they get all the love?
The general argument is that playing in the Pac-10 gives Oregon a much stronger schedule, and any team that goes undefeated in the Pac-10 has had a more difficult road than one that sweeps the lowly Mountain West. This doesn't explain why Oregon is ahead of Auburn; after all, Auburn is undefeated in the hallowed SEC, and as I mentioned earlier, they have played the 7th toughest schedule in the nation thus far. By season's end, their schedule is projected to be the 2nd toughest in the nation overall. Common sense would dictate that for Oregon to finish the season ahead of them (assuming Auburn remains undefeated), Oregon will have to have played the toughest schedule in the nation. They won't. (That dubious honor will likely go to Iowa State).
As of now, Oregon hasn't played the toughest schedule in the nation. Nor the 2nd or 3rd. Or the 25th. Or 50th. As of right now, Oregon has played the 94th toughest schedule in the nation. This weekend's game against underperforming Washington actually managed to give them a boost; they were 101st before that. The 94th hardest schedule in the nation puts them directly above New Mexico State, Idaho, and Western Michigan, in that order. Not exactly the most illustrious company to be in. Three spots ahead of them, tied for 90th, are Eastern Michigan and Louisiana-Lafayette. That means that if they had swapped schedules with Eastern Michigan, they would have statistically been marginally more likely to have lost a game by now.
This is the mightiest team in the nation?
They've played the 4th easiest schedule out of all the BCS conference teams. Only Louisville (100), Syracuse (104), and Northwestern (106) have played easier schedules (is it any shock that all three of these teams have had "surprisingly" good seasons this year?) You'll also notice that Oregon has played the easiest schedule in the Pac-10; the next hardest is USC, way up at 75th. This is no doubt aided by Oregon's stiff out-of-conference schedule featuring the powerhouses New Mexico (1-8), Tennessee (3-6), and Portland State (2-7 in the FCS). Auburn's OOC schedule didn't exactly set the world on fire, but at least they challenged Clemson (currently 5-4).
TCU's strength of schedule thus far ranks 60th; not world-beating, but a far cry from the 90's. They faced (and beat) Oregon State (4-4) and Baylor (7-3), two teams who have winning in-conference records in the Pac-10 and Big 12, respectively. They also beat June Jones' respected 5-5 SMU Mustangs. Boise State, of course, challenged themselves by besting Virginia Tech (7-2, undefeated in the ACC) and Oregon State; even while playing in the sorry Western Athletic Conference, Boise State has managed to top Oregon's schedule strength, ranking 70th nationally. Should we allow a team to claim the #1 ranking if they don't even attempt to challenge themselves any more than they have to?
It's one thing if a team plays in such a strong conference that they genuinely feel they can rest on their laurels and play a bunch of nobodies out of conference. But even a particularly dense observer can see that the top talent in the MWC is better than their counterparts in the Pac-10; over the past calendar year, they've gone head-to-head numerous times. This year, the Pac-10 can proudly claim a 1-2 record versus the Mountain West. Oregon State lost to TCU, and a team everyone seems to continue to believe in, Washington, lost to a team everyone seems adamant about dismissing, BYU. The conference’s only win? Oregon defeated New Mexico, padding their offensive numbers with a 72-0 victory against a team that just got their first win two days ago. Congrats, Oregon.
During last year's bowls, the Pac-10 also faced the Mountain West a couple times. BYU crushed Oregon State 42-20. Utah beat Cal by 10. That's an 0-2 record when some of the best talent in the Pac-10 matched up with some of their counterparts in the MWC. (Overall, while USC beat an overmatched Boston College team and UCLA managed a 9-point win against the MAC's Temple, Arizona got shut out 33-0 against Nebraska, Oklahoma defeated Stanford, and in the Rose Bowl, Ohio State bettered the cream of the Pac-10, and this year's #1 team, Oregon. That's 2-5 in the bowls, including 2 losses to the lowly MWC.)
But that was last year, and this is now. How did the Pac-10 do against top opponents this year out of conference? Against OOC FBS opponents whose records are currently above .500, the conference collectively has gone 6-7. If you wanted to be more generous, and include opponents whose records currently sit at .500, that record actually manages to get worse: 6-8. Their total OOC record, as a conference, sits at 14-9 versus FBS opponents. That means the conference padded their win totals with an 8-1 record against opponents below .500 (the lone loss was BYU's defeat of Washington). Natually, the Pac-10 teams all had their rounds against the best and brightest of the FCS as well, going 7-0 versus such luminaries as The Citadel, UC Davis, and Montana State (that last team only lost to Washington State by a point). Essentially, this conference-- which has been hailed as much-improved compared with last year's group-- only looks good when they're beating up on each other. When they have to play even moderately good teams from other conferences, they falter, and in cases like Oregon's, they might not even dare to play any good teams at all.
This is an Oregon team that has been virtually coronated for going undefeated (so far) in a supposedly tough conference, when that conference has been mostly smoke and mirrors this year. In case you were curious, Auburn's conference, the SEC, has gone 11-2 against out-of-conference FBS foes who are currently over .500 (one of those defeats was Tennessee's loss to Oregon). And in the interest of fairness, the MWC, which includes a few guns-for-hire that are paid to be preyed on by top-20 teams, still managed to record an 8-12 record versus FBS teams currently .500 and above, worse than the Pac-10's 6-8 but only by a few percentage points.
So why is Oregon #1? It's obviously not the numbers. But reputation clearly plays an important role, and Oregon was a popular Pac-10 pick by pundits at the beginning of the year. Even though Oregon began the year at #11 in the AP Poll, they inexplicably jumped to #5 by Week 3, having beaten only New Mexico and Tennessee. From there, it was a question of staying undefeated, as voters would surely boost them over the likes of TCU and Boise State after playing against Pac-10 competition. Auburn, on the other hand? No one thought they'd do much with a JUCO quarterback and a team that went a mere 8-5 last year. So they started the year at #22 in the AP, and even after they made it clear that their offense was a force to be reckoned with, it still took them until Week 8-- with a 7-0 record and a fresh win over Arkansas-- to get into the top 6. And after that, while they got to #1 in the BCS poll following their defeat of LSU, Oregon is now back on top, where they seem likely to stay despite playing in perhaps the most overrated conference in football, and facing some of the worst cumulative competition in the nation. Auburn is stuck at #2 despite having beaten four currently-ranked opponents and playing in the toughest conference in the nation, and TCU is at #3 despite defeating the highest-ranked opponent of the three of them (BCS #5 Utah) and facing superior competition in an arguably superior conference.
Ah, the intrigue of the BCS continues...
And that’s what makes it interesting: if the BCS were to tell us that Akron (0-10) was the #1 team in the nation, we would be forced to accept it. We would be forced to watch them play in the BCS National Championship Game, and if they won it, we would be forced to accept them as BCS National Champions, even if undefeated, major-conference teams failed to get in. And we could watch a team like TCU (10-0), which is at the mercy of the BCS, get left off the polls altogether, if for nothing else to satisfy the desires of the big-conference backers who would love nothing more than to see a top 25 filled with nothing but automatic qualifiers, “the way it should be.” Each of these scenarios is equally unlikely, but it does intrigue the diehard college football fan to know that quirks in the system cause one to sit on pins and needles every time the standings are released, especially if your team is one of the precious few with a legitimate shot at the title game. We trust that the system will make the “right” decision—or at least, we hope it will—but rarely is the proletariat content with the decision of a higher power that they don’t support nor fully understand.
I should make my biases clear: as an avowed BCS hater, I want nothing more than to see at least one non-AQ team make it into the title game this year. That doesn’t mean I lack the ability to discuss the system rationally, but I do view the BCS with an eye toward getting TCU or Boise State into the title game, mostly because it would foil the big-conference commissioners and athletic directors who perpetuate the system, and more than likely lead to its demise.
But fair is fair, and as long as the current system is in place, I don’t want to see any of the big boys get sandbagged either, which is why I’ve found it so curious this week that many sports commentators have been raising the issue of whether TCU should have supplanted Auburn in this week’s polls. I don’t agree with this notion; Auburn has played the 7th toughest schedule in the nation and is the only team besides TCU sitting at 10-0, and they deserve to be #1 more than any other team in the country. My concern is why writers and talking heads have declined to go after a more obvious target: Oregon.
I am not nearly alone in my dislike of the BCS, but even commentators who have acknowledged the fact that TCU might be unfairly left out of the top two seem to be content with the notion that Oregon is #1. The gushing praise from commentators, in fact, can be downright sickening. They mostly seem to love Oregon's offense, currently #1 in the nation in both yardage and points, and point to this as proof of Oregon's stature as the #1 team in the country. Granted, their offense has been nothing to sneeze at this year. But Oregon's accomplishments have been a mirage, and the schedule played by the Ducks, more than anything, has allowed them to gain the status they now enjoy.
Let's take a look at the average national total defensive ranking of each of the BCS conferences:
Big East: 26.1
SEC: 41.8
Big Ten: 50.5
ACC: 51
Pac-10: 64.1
Big 12: 72.6
There are a few surprises on this list-- I know quite a few people who would be shocked to see the Big East easily atop this list, and probably just as many who would be surprised to see the Big 12 at the bottom. Indeed, though, one of the least surprising things about this list is who is just above the Big 12: the Pac-10, which boasts only three teams (Oregon, Cal, Stanford) among the top 50 defenses nationally, the only BCS conference besides the Big 12 with that distinction. But perhaps the most surprising thing about this list concerns who is not on it. Let's take a look at that list again, with one small alteration:
Big East: 26.1
SEC: 41.8
Big Ten: 50.5
ACC: 51
Mountain West: 63.7
Pac-10: 64.1
Big 12: 72.6
Yes, that's right. Even if we count bottom-dwellers like New Mexico, Wyoming, and UNLV (all in the bottom 20 defensively in the nation), the MWC still bests the Pac-10's overall defensive rankings nationally. Yet TCU is an impressive 8th in the nation offensively despite not yet playing New Mexico (118th nationally) while Oregon has yet to play California (12th) or Arizona (60th). And while Oregon holds the top spot in the nation due mostly to its flashy offense (567 yards per game), TCU has been no slouch either, putting up 493 yards per game. And while Oregon has also been allowing 329 yards per contest, TCU has only let up 216. Oregon outgains opponents by 238 yards per game; TCU outgains opponents by 277. So if Oregon's overall game isn't as dominant as TCU's, why do they get all the love?
The general argument is that playing in the Pac-10 gives Oregon a much stronger schedule, and any team that goes undefeated in the Pac-10 has had a more difficult road than one that sweeps the lowly Mountain West. This doesn't explain why Oregon is ahead of Auburn; after all, Auburn is undefeated in the hallowed SEC, and as I mentioned earlier, they have played the 7th toughest schedule in the nation thus far. By season's end, their schedule is projected to be the 2nd toughest in the nation overall. Common sense would dictate that for Oregon to finish the season ahead of them (assuming Auburn remains undefeated), Oregon will have to have played the toughest schedule in the nation. They won't. (That dubious honor will likely go to Iowa State).
As of now, Oregon hasn't played the toughest schedule in the nation. Nor the 2nd or 3rd. Or the 25th. Or 50th. As of right now, Oregon has played the 94th toughest schedule in the nation. This weekend's game against underperforming Washington actually managed to give them a boost; they were 101st before that. The 94th hardest schedule in the nation puts them directly above New Mexico State, Idaho, and Western Michigan, in that order. Not exactly the most illustrious company to be in. Three spots ahead of them, tied for 90th, are Eastern Michigan and Louisiana-Lafayette. That means that if they had swapped schedules with Eastern Michigan, they would have statistically been marginally more likely to have lost a game by now.
This is the mightiest team in the nation?
They've played the 4th easiest schedule out of all the BCS conference teams. Only Louisville (100), Syracuse (104), and Northwestern (106) have played easier schedules (is it any shock that all three of these teams have had "surprisingly" good seasons this year?) You'll also notice that Oregon has played the easiest schedule in the Pac-10; the next hardest is USC, way up at 75th. This is no doubt aided by Oregon's stiff out-of-conference schedule featuring the powerhouses New Mexico (1-8), Tennessee (3-6), and Portland State (2-7 in the FCS). Auburn's OOC schedule didn't exactly set the world on fire, but at least they challenged Clemson (currently 5-4).
TCU's strength of schedule thus far ranks 60th; not world-beating, but a far cry from the 90's. They faced (and beat) Oregon State (4-4) and Baylor (7-3), two teams who have winning in-conference records in the Pac-10 and Big 12, respectively. They also beat June Jones' respected 5-5 SMU Mustangs. Boise State, of course, challenged themselves by besting Virginia Tech (7-2, undefeated in the ACC) and Oregon State; even while playing in the sorry Western Athletic Conference, Boise State has managed to top Oregon's schedule strength, ranking 70th nationally. Should we allow a team to claim the #1 ranking if they don't even attempt to challenge themselves any more than they have to?
It's one thing if a team plays in such a strong conference that they genuinely feel they can rest on their laurels and play a bunch of nobodies out of conference. But even a particularly dense observer can see that the top talent in the MWC is better than their counterparts in the Pac-10; over the past calendar year, they've gone head-to-head numerous times. This year, the Pac-10 can proudly claim a 1-2 record versus the Mountain West. Oregon State lost to TCU, and a team everyone seems to continue to believe in, Washington, lost to a team everyone seems adamant about dismissing, BYU. The conference’s only win? Oregon defeated New Mexico, padding their offensive numbers with a 72-0 victory against a team that just got their first win two days ago. Congrats, Oregon.
During last year's bowls, the Pac-10 also faced the Mountain West a couple times. BYU crushed Oregon State 42-20. Utah beat Cal by 10. That's an 0-2 record when some of the best talent in the Pac-10 matched up with some of their counterparts in the MWC. (Overall, while USC beat an overmatched Boston College team and UCLA managed a 9-point win against the MAC's Temple, Arizona got shut out 33-0 against Nebraska, Oklahoma defeated Stanford, and in the Rose Bowl, Ohio State bettered the cream of the Pac-10, and this year's #1 team, Oregon. That's 2-5 in the bowls, including 2 losses to the lowly MWC.)
But that was last year, and this is now. How did the Pac-10 do against top opponents this year out of conference? Against OOC FBS opponents whose records are currently above .500, the conference collectively has gone 6-7. If you wanted to be more generous, and include opponents whose records currently sit at .500, that record actually manages to get worse: 6-8. Their total OOC record, as a conference, sits at 14-9 versus FBS opponents. That means the conference padded their win totals with an 8-1 record against opponents below .500 (the lone loss was BYU's defeat of Washington). Natually, the Pac-10 teams all had their rounds against the best and brightest of the FCS as well, going 7-0 versus such luminaries as The Citadel, UC Davis, and Montana State (that last team only lost to Washington State by a point). Essentially, this conference-- which has been hailed as much-improved compared with last year's group-- only looks good when they're beating up on each other. When they have to play even moderately good teams from other conferences, they falter, and in cases like Oregon's, they might not even dare to play any good teams at all.
This is an Oregon team that has been virtually coronated for going undefeated (so far) in a supposedly tough conference, when that conference has been mostly smoke and mirrors this year. In case you were curious, Auburn's conference, the SEC, has gone 11-2 against out-of-conference FBS foes who are currently over .500 (one of those defeats was Tennessee's loss to Oregon). And in the interest of fairness, the MWC, which includes a few guns-for-hire that are paid to be preyed on by top-20 teams, still managed to record an 8-12 record versus FBS teams currently .500 and above, worse than the Pac-10's 6-8 but only by a few percentage points.
So why is Oregon #1? It's obviously not the numbers. But reputation clearly plays an important role, and Oregon was a popular Pac-10 pick by pundits at the beginning of the year. Even though Oregon began the year at #11 in the AP Poll, they inexplicably jumped to #5 by Week 3, having beaten only New Mexico and Tennessee. From there, it was a question of staying undefeated, as voters would surely boost them over the likes of TCU and Boise State after playing against Pac-10 competition. Auburn, on the other hand? No one thought they'd do much with a JUCO quarterback and a team that went a mere 8-5 last year. So they started the year at #22 in the AP, and even after they made it clear that their offense was a force to be reckoned with, it still took them until Week 8-- with a 7-0 record and a fresh win over Arkansas-- to get into the top 6. And after that, while they got to #1 in the BCS poll following their defeat of LSU, Oregon is now back on top, where they seem likely to stay despite playing in perhaps the most overrated conference in football, and facing some of the worst cumulative competition in the nation. Auburn is stuck at #2 despite having beaten four currently-ranked opponents and playing in the toughest conference in the nation, and TCU is at #3 despite defeating the highest-ranked opponent of the three of them (BCS #5 Utah) and facing superior competition in an arguably superior conference.
Ah, the intrigue of the BCS continues...
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